The Ritual Year

The working group
on The Ritual Year was established at the conference in Marseille on April 29, 2004. Initiated by Dr Emily Lyle
the inaugural meeting was held on 11 July 2004, in the department of Celtic and Scottish Studies at the
University of Edinburgh.

Any SIEF member who wishes to join the working group should contact secretary Irina Sedakova (ritualyear(at)siefhome.org). The Ritual Year working group provides a valuable forum for discussion. Our meetings encompass a
wide choice of materials and approaches, and the focus may well change from
conference to conference. The format is flexible to ensure we hear presentations from
scholars representing a wide range of countries and approaches.

Topics discussed include: civic ritual and processions, community identity, masking and drama,
carnival and reversal, reciprocity and exchange, computerised aids to calendrical research, sports, dance and
music, contemporary popular use of religious images, cosmological roots, interfaces between the secular and the
religious and between different religions, festival foods, and symbolism linked to the economic bases of
society, especially as concerns agriculture.

The field of study that often relates to this one rather closely in teaching students is that of life cycle
customs, and the perceived connections between the year cycle and the life cycle seem likely to strengthen so
that it may seem more and more appropriate to consider parallels between them. As in other ethnological areas of
enquiry, members will take account of continuity, change and meaning, but the thing that is unique to this
working group is the framework of the year.